The heat has been turned up on CX. Everywhere I’m going, there’s been a spotlight on customer experience.
‘The quality of experience matters more than anything.’
Eoghan McCabe – CEO of Intercom
Often when you’re thinking about CX, terms like ‘digital self-service’ & ‘personalisation’ tend to emerge. There’s a lot of pressure on businesses to invest in these areas – we can thank AI & Netflix for changing the game on these.
Before you jump on the bandwagon, how about doing a litmus check on your current CX first. You might be wondering, where do I start?
The thing is, Customer Experience is so broad. And the reality is that every part of your business impacts on customer experience. Your staff. Your processes. Your technology. Your products or services. Your channels. Your brand.
Our team is asked to help businesses unlock greater value through the development of CX Strategies to offer a blueprint for transformation and growth. With this type of work, it can be hard to find the right place to start.
So where do you start? What do you do? Activate problem-hunter mode. Roll up your sleeves and jump in.
Here are some basics that can help:
- Talk to your front-line customer service team – what’s their day to day like? How do they respond to customer enquiries? What tools are they using? Do these tools aid or hinder their day-to-day? How are they performing in general? Where are the problems?
- Examine your current customer enquiry processes – How do customers engage with your business? Across digital / physical channels. What do these current state journeys look like? Map them out. Where are the problems?
- Mine your data – look through customer enquiries & complaints for common issues – is there a particular part of the customer journey which hits a roadblock? How big is the problem? Size it up, size the need & prioritise.
- It could be the sign-up process.
- It could be getting a refund.
- It could be about the really dry chicken on that recent Qantas flight.
- Talk to business stakeholders. They’ve seen it all, they’ve heard it all, and they can help join the dots & offer perspectives that you haven’t thought about.
No business is perfect. And that’s okay. You’ll probably surface loads of problems – both micro and macro. That’s also okay. There’s way to prioritise and move forward from there.
CX is broad for a reason. Which means it requires a shift in company culture so that you literally become customer-centric in everything you do. This requires investment, energy and time. And a laser-like attention to problem-hunting and solutioning from there. Go forth and dig up the dirt.